The past decade has seen major shifts in Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activism in the US. Many of these changes both inform and are caused by the explosion of awareness of the Palestinian struggle. However, Palestine’s newfound popularity does not necessarily translate into more political power or better conditions for Palestinians.

Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson isn't your typical BDS activist: she spent three years in Israel, is married to an Israeli and has relatives in the West Bank. Despite many critics in the organized Jewish community, she says JVP is thriving in the Trump era and doesn't need the establishment's stamp of approval.

Shortly after Moshé Machover was expelled from the British Labour Party, Science for the People activists organized an international petition in his defense. Prioritizing academics from Machover’s fields–Mathematics and Philosophy of Logic–but also featuring Israelis, Palestine solidarity activists and British legal professionals, the list of Lead Signatories quickly became impressively star-studded. Machover’s colleagues had rallied to his defense and, just as we were preparing to deliver and publish the petition, we received word that the expulsion had been rescinded!

There is growing hysteria about foreign interference in US and European politics. Is it not time for western states to show as much concern about the malign influence of Israel’s lobbyists as they do about Russian hackers?

The British policy elite's views reflected deeply embedded notions of the 'Jewish race' and 'Jewish power', the 'impurity' of the Palestinian Arabs - and the incapability of both to ever rule themselves. Those tropes still reverberate today”

IT WAS DIFFICULT to ascertain on the basis of media reports whether Brighton played host this month to a Labour Party conference or a Nuremberg rally. This article investigates claims of antisemitism at the Labour conference and finds them to be without factual basis.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn received his longest and loudest standing ovation at his party’s conference when he called for an “end to the oppression of the Palestinian people” and Israel’s “50-year occupation and illegal settlement expansion.”

Jonathan OFIR: "Moshe Machover and the battle for the soul of British Labour" (Mondoweiss, Oct 6, 2017): click here!

This week, Moshe Machover, a Jewish mathematician and philosophy professor at the University of London, was expelled from the British Labour party, for having written an article called, “Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism”.

A renowned Israeli anti-Zionist was expelled from Labour on Tuesday, as the party bureaucracy falsely accused him of anti-Semitism.
Retired philosophy professor Moshé Machover told The Electronic Intifada that the expulsion by the UK’s main opposition party was a “clear violation of natural justice,” was “Stalinist” and “completely undemocratic.”

The speech by British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn at last week’s annual party conference included an unequivocal declaration of solidarity with the Palestinians. “Let’s give real support to end the oppression of the Palestinian people, the 50-year occupation and illegal settlement expansion and move to a genuine two-state solution”.

Ten years ago, John Mearsheimer and I published a controversial article and subsequent book examining the impact of the “Israel Lobby” — that is, a loose coalition of pro-Israel individuals and organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Christians United for Israel, just to name a few.

Jewish Voice for Labour, a new organisation for Labour Party Jews who don’t want to buy into the Jewish Labour Movement’s pro-Zionist agenda, launched with a flourish at the Labour Party Annual Conference on Monday night 25th September. Or perhaps with a fanfare.

The whole campaign of equating opposition to Zionism with anti-Semitism has, in fact, been carefully orchestrated with the help of the Israeli government and the far right in the US. It is easy to explain why.

Far-reaching compromises by Hamas have been met in recent months with a firm wall of intransigence, both from Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and from the so-called international community – especially the European Union.

It’s not uncommon for residents of America’s most heavily policed neighborhoods to describe their local cops as “an occupying force.” Judging by where many U.S. police forces get their training, the description seems apt.

During the five-hour assault in Jubbet al-Dib, Israeli forces declared the area a closed military zone and used stun grenades, tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets to keep residents away as they dismantled and confiscated the buildings.

The European Union has hired an Israeli who advocates genocidal violence against Palestinians as the face of a new promotional campaign. Avishai Ivri appears in a video the EU embassy in Tel Aviv posted on its Facebook page last month.

Stuart LITTLEWOOD: "The Balfour Declaration: Time to say sorry. Time we made amends" (Redress Information & Analysis, July 23, 2017): click here!

In a letter to a local newspaper about Brexit and the way Prime Minister Theresa May is handling it, I happened to mention in passing the Balfour Declaration, criticising her plans to celebrate the centenary “with pride” and invite Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to the fun.

The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel.

Mikhael MANNEKIN: "Lost in Translation: The Israeli-U.S. Jewish Anti-occupation Alliance Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?" (Haaretz, July 6, 2017): click here.

While right-wing ties deepen, relations between progressives - against the occupation, for liberal democracy and pluralism in Israel - are fraying. We need a new way to make political change, together.

Philip WEISS: "Pro-Israel ‘gatekeepers’ at California university shut down search for Edward Said scholar, a candidate say" (Mondoweiss, July 2, 2017): click here.

In April, administrators at California State University at Fresno canceled a search to fill the Edward Said Chair in Middle East Studies after a committee came up with four finalists, all of whom were reported to be of “Middle Eastern background” and to be focused on Palestinian issues.

The Palestinian village of Sarura was destroyed in 1997 and its residents have not returned for fear of settler violence. Dozens of Jewish volunteers from the U.S., Canada and Australia have joined Palestinian activists in renovating it.

David CRONIN: "Do European Parliament staff work for Israel?" (EI, June 29, 2017): click here.

At this juncture, it would be foolish to predict the full consequences of Brexit. One probability, however, is that Britain’s departure from the European Union will cause Israel to lose a few apologists in Brussels.Those apologists include Britain’s Conservative members of the European Parliament.

In yet another sign that the Democratic left is determined to stand up for Palestinian human rights, 34 congresspeople have signed letters supportive of Issa Amro, the courageous and non-violent leader of protest actions in occupied Hebron who has been accused by Israel of 18 charges...

The European Union is illegally funding Israeli torturers and must stop, a group of prominent international legal experts has concluded. They say that the LAW-TRAIN program violates EU regulations and international law because one of the participants, Israel’s public security ministry, “is responsible for or complicit in torture, other crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

Displaying enormous hypocrisy, NGO Monitor appears happy to ally itself with actual peddlers of bigotry. Next week, it will jointly host an event in the European Parliament chaired by a representative of the far-right Danish People’s Party.

Amanda BORSCHEL-DAN: "‘Devastating’ survey shows huge loss of Israel support among Jewish college students" (The Times of Israel, June 21, 2017): click here.

Since its initial coalescence in 2002, Brand Israel has commissioned a large-scale segmentation study in 2010 and a followup in 2016. For anyone with the slightest Zionist impulse, the downward slope of Israel support is disturbing.

Daniel BARENBOIM: "Germany Is Repaying Its post-Holocaust Debts to Israel - but Not to the Palestinians" (Haaretz, June 8, 2017): click here.

Europe, whose anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust, also has moral and historical obligations towards the Palestinians, who still suffer its consequences.

Unconditionally backed by the sole superpower and equipped with one of the most advanced armies in the region, Israel promises to recover Greek geopolitical power in the region through enhanced cooperation in oil, tourism, and military affairs. In exchange, Greece supports Israel in crucial international votes.

David L.MANDEL: "In groundbreaking resolution, California Democratic Party decries US support for Israeli occupation" (Mondoweiss, May 26, 2017): click here.

Palestinian rights supporters steered to passage a groundbreaking resolution that puts California Democrats far ahead of the national and other state parties.

Philip WEISS: "Courageous Israeli newspaper is indicted as ‘childish’ ‘contrarian’ and ‘antagonistic’ by the yellowbellied New York Times" (Mondoweiss, May 16, 2017): click here.

This is unbelievable. Haaretz is surely one of the greatest newspapers in the world, because it insists on telling Israelis the truth about their society as the country loses the good opinion of the world.

“Back in the day,” which in this case was 8 February 2007, the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism adopted a “working definition” of anti-Semitism which included the following point: It is anti-Semitic to “deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour)”.

Quoting historical facts can hardly be anti-Semitic, which is presumably why the Labour Party didn’t even charge Livingstone with it.

Jonathan OFIR: "Why so many are twisting Ken Livingstone’s words about Hitler and Zionism" (Mondoweiss, April 6, 2017): click here.

Two days ago, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was sentenced to another year of suspension after a hearing by the Labour Party’s national constitutional committee (NCC) concerning his remarks on Hitler’s temporary support for Zionism.

The criticism comes after the European Union demanded that Israel stop demolishing Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank.

Kamel HAWWASH: "The UK is quietly changing its policy on Israel and Palestine" (MEMo, April 5, 2017): click here.

Palestinians were delighted to see 2016 end with the UN Security Council passing resolution 2334 which reaffirmed the illegality of Israel’s settlement enterprise. The passing of the resolution was facilitated by the US abstention in the dying days of Obama’s administration. The UK played a key role in the drafting of the resolution and then voted in favour.

Barak RAVID: "EU Sharply Protests Israeli Demolition of Palestinian Homes in Area C, Warns It Will Lead to 'Forced Transfer'" (Haaretz, April 4, 2017): click here.

A routine meeting between the Foreign Ministry's director and the EU envoys last week turned into a protest by the European states against Israel's plan to demolish a Bedouin village.

The enemies of free speech were having a whale of a time – until this week. Britain’s political parties, further education establishments and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) groups had been bludgeoned into silence on Israel’s crimes by a bogus definition of anti-Semitism formally adopted and deployed by government, police and assorted pro-Israel pimps, stooges and creeps.

Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, has written some sensible things in the past, particularly about the dangers of religious exclusivism and about the roots of sectarian violence in what he calls the fallacy of “altruistic evil.”

Robert FISK: "Theresa May wants British people to feel 'pride' in the Balfour Declaration. What exactly is there to be proud of?" (Independent, March 2, 2017): click here!

Balfour initiated a policy of British support for Israel which continues to this very day, to the detriment of the occupied Palestinians of the West Bank and the five million Palestinian refugees living largely in warrens of poverty around the Middle East, including Israeli-besieged Gaza. Surely we should apologise.

"These are outrageous interferences with free expression, and are direct attacks on academic freedom. As academics with positions at UK universities, we wish to express our dismay at this attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel, including its violation of the rights of Palestinians for more than 50 years. It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel under the thin disguise of concern about antisemitism."

Earlier this week, the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) cancelled an event planned as part of ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’, on the grounds that it “contravenes” a controversial definition of anti-Semitism recently endorsed by the UK government.

The task of Israel’s advocates has become a lot more complicated. At least, that is the argument which one such lobbyist has been making. Alex Benjamin, head of the organization Europe Israel Public Affairs (EIPA), recently lamented that his friends and acquaintances in Brussels weren’t enamored by moves towards annexing most of the West Bank.

AIPAC is hoping to turn UK politics into a carbon copy of the US Congress, where the powerful lobby group has long quashed virtually all open criticism of Israel’s violent suppression of Palestinian rights.

Aljazeera is to be congratulated on an undercover investigation exposing something most of us could probably have guessed: that some Israeli embassy staff in the UK – let’s not pussy around, Mossad agents – are working with senior political activists and politicians in the Conservative and Labour parties to subvert their own parties from within, and skew British foreign policy so that it benefits Israeli, rather than British, interests.

This is still a Christian country, as your colleague David Cameron reminded us not so long ago. But you wouldn’t think so when non-Christian creeds are given exceptional protection and privileges to smooth their ruffled feathers. Your government is even introducing new laws to stifle questions about Israel’s legitimacy and quash criticism of its criminal policies.

Given US President-elect Donald Trump's past declarations regarding the two-state solution, the European Union is now exploring a more independent regional policy as a basis for international consensus.

The shocking Donald Trump victory in the 2016 election has many people wondering what if it had been Bernie Sanders facing off against Donald Trump. How tantalizing does that race seem now? Naturally we hear if Hillary couldn’t beat Trump, how would Sanders?

The US government is being sued for authorizing massive weapons deliveries to Israel. A new lawsuit notes that the State Department approved the export of more than 47 million rounds of ammunition to Israel between 2007 and 2009. That was enough to “injure or kill every Palestinian living under occupation 10 times over,” according to the lawsuit.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016. A very large segment of the American people are shell-shocked. Bitterly critical as we were of Hillary Clinton, and I include myself in that camp, we still somehow expected her to win. We thought she, and “the establishment,” were invincible.

Next year will mark the 50 year anniversary of Israel’s de facto annexation and prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory. The approaching milestone will bring with it a renewed focus on both the failings and future direction of international peacemaking efforts.

A new report by an influential parliamentary committee has recommended that the UK outlaw the word “Zionist” when used “in an accusatory context.” Published on Sunday, the Home Affairs Select Committee’s report also slams Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for heading a party with “institutionally anti-Semitic” elements.

As Western outrage erupts over the relentless destruction of Aleppo and its people, why is there no similar clamour for a halt to the more prolonged pulverising of Gaza and the continuing slaughter of civilians there?

The Obama administration just handed Israel the largest military aid deal in US history. Now it is feigning outrage that Israel keeps colonizing the occupied West Bank, as it has done for decades, in defiance of the White House’s wishes.

It seems our politicians, on both sides of the Atlantic, are under instructions to drop the J-word from their vocabulary. I mean J-for-Justice, conspicuously missing from any discussion about Middle East peace and, more specifically, an end to the hell in the Holy Land.

It's hard to tell what's more offensive about Netanyahu and Bennett's new initiative to 'strengthen' Jewish identity abroad: the idea itself or its ham-handed, arrogant and ultimately counterproductive execution.

The cops flew into Tel Aviv on a Sunday afternoon. Four hours later, they met with an Anti-Defamation League official and an Israeli professor, who gave them an “introduction to Israeli politics and society.”

Thousands were touched by the Celtic fans’ show of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Large sections of the stadium turned into a sea of green, red, black and white as fans raised the Palestinian flag despite repeated warnings from European football’s governing body (UEFA).

Nitzan HOROWITZ: "The Messiah Won’t Come to Israel From Across the Atlantic" (Haaretz, August 24, 2016): click here!

The longing for international pressure is not only pointless, but enfeebling and enervating.”

With the US preoccupied by elections, Egypt not committed, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas politically weak and Israel reluctant, the European Union is about to give up on the two-state solution process.

A group of European parliamentarians and lawyers recently returned from a delegation to Palestine organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, working in cooperation with Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Open any British newspaper, from the Guardian to the Mail, and be confronted with anti-Corbyn smears. Attacks that have included criticism of poor local election results, weak media management or “woeful” Prime Minister’s Questions performances are now fixated on linking Corbyn with a supposedly ‘endemic’ anti-semitism in Labour’s rank and file.

Unbelievably, Labour Party chiefs are trying to persuade David Miliband to come back from New York, parachute into a safe seat and snatch the Labour Party leadership from Jeremy Corbyn, according to newspaper reports.

British Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood condemned on Thursday Israel's decision moving forward with another 323 illegal settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem.

Carol MORELLO and Ruth EGLASH: "Israel and U.S. are close to a deal on the biggest military aid package ever" (The Washington Post, July 29, 2016): click here!

A senior Israeli official will arrive in Washington next week for a final round of negotiations involving the largest military aid package the United States has ever given any country and that will last more than a decade after President Obama leaves office.

The US Department of State released a statement Wednesday slamming Israel’s continued settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, while expressing concern over the recent increase of demolitions on Palestinian homes that have left dozens of Palestinians homeless this week.

Eight ambassadors to Israel have written to the Israeli military accusing it of breaking international humanitarian law by confiscating shelters for Bedouins in the occupied West Bank that were paid for by European governments.

EU states, in an internal report drafted last year, have said the outbreak of Palestinian knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem is due, in large part, to Israel’s occupation. They said the attacks began after right-wing Israeli politicians and religious groups began to question the status quo on Arab rights at the Temple Mount complex in the Old City.

A lawmaker caused a media firestorm at the launch of an independent UK Labour Party report into anti-Semitism and racism on Thursday. The report failed to back claims that the Labour Party had been overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism.

As European leaders are gathered in Brussels to discuss the future of the EU, they would be well advised to put into effect values of accountability, justice and solidarity - and halt funding for Israel's repressive apparatus against Palestinians.

The Resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict is a fundamental interest of the EU. The EU’s objective is a two-state solution with an independent, democratic, viable and contiguous Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours.

Sales to Europe grew from $724 million in 2014 to $1.63 billion in 2015, presumably as a consequence of the refugee crisis and the rise in terror attacks on the continent. Sales to North America also climbed, to $1.02 billion.

New concerns arise as activists discovered the EU-Israel partnership through the LAWTRAIN Project in the framework of the EU HORIZON 2020. The project is meant to unify the methodology for interrogation among Israeli and EU police forces and is a de facto normalisation of Israel’s most cruel practices, including physical and psychological torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, threats, racial discrimination.

Motivated by the dual aims of strengthening the Middle East Peace Process and contributing to Palestinian state-building, the European Union and its member states have been the biggest donors of financial assistance to the Palestinians.

The concept of Israel has become a hidden cornerstone within political consensus in Western European states. This is not unrelated to the disappearing differences between the traditional Left and Right. Within the current political climate, not only Germany but also all other western states are ‘friends of Israel’.

Some 90 Palestinian Bedouins, the majority of them children, were left homeless on Monday when Israeli forces disassembled EU-donated mobile homes without giving prior notice in the Jabal al-Baba neighborhood in the outskirts of the village of al-Eizariya east of Jerusalem.

It was an assessment no one expected from the deputy head of the Israeli military. In his Holocaust Day speech last week, Yair Golan compared current trends in Israel with Germany in the early 1930s, as Nazism took hold.

Inside the pro-Israel campaign to crush Labour’s left-wing insurgency... Though Labour performed far better in the May 5 local elections than a generally hostile media predicted, Corbyn’s opponents are determined to paint him as unelectable, just as they did during last year’s campaign for leadership.

Philip WEISS & Adam HOROWITZ: "Saying Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is not anti-Semitic" (Mondoweiss, May 3, 2016): click here!

In practice, the Jewish State in Israel/Palestine has meant an ethnocracy where Jews are given special and exclusive rights over other citizens and non-citizens under the sovereignty of the Israeli government. This is a system that we (Horowitz and Weiss) reject for political, personal and moral reasons that are in no way connected to vilifying or discriminating against Jews, the traditional definition of anti-Semitism.

We are desperately in need of some sanity as the British political and media establishment seek to generate yet another “new anti-semitism” crisis, on this occasion to undermine a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party before the upcoming local elections.

Robert COHEN: "Advice to British leftwingers on kicking racism out of their anti-Israel rhetoric" (Mondoweiss, May 2, 2016): click here!

Too often I see those in solidarity with Palestinians lose the plot and allow opponents to grab the agenda and deflect attention from where the suffering really exists. That’s exactly what’s been happening in Britain this week as a row over antisemitism in the Labour Party has dominated the news.

Michael Levy, the Labour Party peer and Tony Blair’s former “Lord Cashpoint” claimed on BBC Newsnight a few days ago that “using the word Zionist” is “another form of anti-Semitism”. Using the word. This is an astonishing new level in the attempt to crush dissent over Israel and designate thought crimes.

When the world’s conduct is understood in terms of guilt, one realizes that it needs to be helped to understand that the best way to see to the wellbeing of Israel is to present it with boundaries.

Robert MACKEY: "Why a British Fight Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Matters to the Rest of Us" (The Intercept, May 1, 2016): click here!

At first glance, the heated argument two members of the British Labour Party conducted in front of reporters’ iPhones on Thursday, sparked by accusations that one of their colleagues posted anti-Semitic comments on Facebook, seems like a story of interest mainly to political junkies in London.

Last year, socialist stalwart Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the UK’s Labour Party by a landslide. Since then, there has been a steady flow of claims by Israel’s supporters that Corbyn has not done enough to combat anti-Semitism.

Maidhc Ó CATHAIL: "Likud Becomes a Regional Member of the European Parliament" (CounterPunch, April 27, 2016): click here.

Although Israel is geographically located in Asia, the self-described “Jewish state” has emphasized its Europeanness whenever it has suited it to do so.

Rashid KHALIDI: "The US Elections, Attacks on Activists, and a Changing Discourse" (Al Shabaka, April 25, 2016): click here.

In his 2013 book "Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East", Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Rashid Khalidi identified three main patterns that have characterized United States policy towards the conflict since 1948: The complaisance of Arab rulers that need US support against their own peoples; presidential solicitude for domestic constituencies; and US unconcern about the fate of the Palestinians.

Israel’s war crimes sometimes have to be overlooked, according to a senior European Union representative. During 2013, Israel reacted angrily when Brussels officials issued a policy paper stating that the EU would not award funding to firms and institutions based in Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?"Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).

Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context"(+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."